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Agreed on WSB culture but.... The "real question," imo is not about how FB, discord or reddit handle WSB's culture. It's why have they all decided to act right

Agreed on WSB culture but.... The "real question," imo is not about how FB, discord or reddit handle WSB's culture. It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? That is the fishy part... and it's too fishy to leave it unaddressed and talk content. Either way, this just shows why we can't have a handful of companies moderating most of the internet under a TOS regime.

wvenable 6y ago
It might be fishy but there is also a lot new interest in WSB and everything related. So much interest that /r/WSB voluntarily shut themselves down for a while because they couldn't handle the moderation situation. So why it's happening now can more multifaceted than the more conspiratorial reasons. Even increased media attention is enough for someone to act -- The Hackernews community uses that all the time to get apps unbanned from the app store, for example.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Sure. I don't mean that it's unequivocally part of a conspiracy. But like I said, It can't go unaddressed. This isn't a Hacker news story about a banned app. It's international news, and the news isn't about WSB's (admittedly) bad language.
  - wvenable 6y ago
    It's international news -- so the spotlight is on. Probably most of the Internet is unsavory and nobody cares because nobody knows.
  - bravura 6y ago
    Social networks were forced to moderate with the capitol riots. Now they have to moderate left wing mob organization on their platforms to avoid the perception they will only censor the right wing.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      WSB is less left-wing, more Libertarian. I routinely see them shit on both the left and right.
    - tux1968 6y ago
      If that was the thinking, they would be shutting down the groups that are organized and protesting in the pacific northwest.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      This is clearly a slippery slope. Regulate once, regulate twice, and so on...
- jb775 6y ago
  Serious question: Since Facebook is a private company, does the "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits partisan politics? The RobinHood $GME situation is the natural next step in societal evolution once extreme censorship is given a pass. If you support the "go build it yourself" argument, you no longer have the right to complain about anything that's theoretically reproducible.
  - wvenable 6y ago
    Absolutely! I'm not sure why you replied to my comment with this but I totally believe that Facebook doesn't have any legal or moral requirement to host anything they don't want to. They could literally just punt me tomorrow because they don't like my name and that's their right. Especially because there is no commercial or contractual relationship between us. I am not a customer of Facebook. If you pay for hosting then you have a contract and then you and the company you're buying from are beholden to those terms.
    - piokoch 6y ago
      I believe when you sign up to Facebook you need to accept some terms and condition clause - this is the contract which is signed between you and Facebook (Facebook is referring that document when users are banned, so apparently they consider this as contract). Facebook earns money thanks to its users, providing them some service so definitely there should be a contract here. Now, when you look on those T&C, they are very vague, especially possible reasons for account suspension are very, very vague. They refer user to some "community standards" and it is not clear, if those "standards" are part of the contract or not. In my opinion, the first thing that should be changed is to force Facebook and other services to provide a clear, formal contract that would state what are duties of both contract parts, what rights they have, etc. Stuff that each normal contract has. No mumbling about "community", etc. Contract should be something that is enforceable and has clear appeal path and so on. If I don't agree with Facebook I should be able to court and refer to something that is specific and well defined, not some Mark Zuckerberg views on what is good or bad.
- eggy 6y ago
  "/r/WSB voluntrily shut themselves down" is the point. It was self-managment. When a tech oligarchy - FB, Twitter, etc. acts together to censor that is my concern. Like there wasn't lot of silly banter or still is on many forums, except this one pissed off hedge fund managers and traditional investors. Mark must have lost money ;)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Scaevolus 6y ago
Historically, reddit is most likely to move against subreddits when they cause embarrassing news articles.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Make no mistake, Reddit is absolutely loving this. WSB has 3 million new subscribers in the past 2 weeks. The only thing the executives at reddit care about is revenue and hence impressions, which is exactly what they're getting.
  - thisisnico 6y ago
    Also, do you see just HOW MANY awards are being applied to WSB posts? It's consistently off the charts lol. I'm willing to bet it's the most awarded subreddit by a wide margin.
  - encom 6y ago
    >The only thing the executives at reddit care about is revenue and hence impressions Oh please. If that was true, they wouldn't have banned TheDonald, especially so close to the election. That sub drove a huge amount of traffic.
    - colinmhayes 6y ago
      They know they have more to lose by pissing off the community.
    - Darmody 6y ago
      Everything surrounding TD subreddit was getting out of hand so they had to act to look like the good guys who care about stuff.
    - belorn 6y ago
      If we are talking money incentives, a community that are discussing stock investments seems more interesting for advertisement than politics. If a person are investing in stock options, it almost guarantied that they have spare money.
newacct583 6y ago
Largely because the "gamestop maneuver" has inflammed an already excitable community and things are likely bubbling over right now in a way that they wouldn't be if people hadn't just bet thousands of dollars on a tulip scam. And let's not euphemize this, it's not a "maneuver", it's market manipulation. Coordinating a collective buy to effect a short squeeze is clear market manipulation. Enticing a horde of gullible forum users to buy the same ballooned stock based on ideas like "stick it to the man" and "turn their tricks back on them" is an even clearer pump and dump scheme. This doesn't end well for anyone (except Gamestop's pre-existing shareholders I guess). The hedge fund got fleeced, the gullible WSB users are going to lose a ton, Robinhood flushed their brand down the toilet trying to avoid being an accomplice to all of this, and the only folks who made money on the deal are more likely than not in the SEC crosshairs now.
- fny 6y ago
  No it's not market manipulation. Its counter party risk gone awry and the entirety of the internet finding out about it at the same time. In my view, hedge funds have implicitly colluded for years on short positions because it's in their best interests not to screw each other over the long haul. Imagine going against Citadel as a fund. Your career is over. The fact the short interest rose to 140% is proof of that. This trade should have been shaken out sooner, but no one would dare given the powers that be who were backing it. Also, consider the bond holders as true original victims here. Is it right that they had people artificially putting downward pressure on the security of a company that is indebted to them? If you believe in reflexivity, this is depriving lenders of a fair security valuation, which is an asset of sorts, and further driving them towards a delisting or bankruptcy.
  - sampo 6y ago
    > no one would dare given the powers that be who were backing it But now that it has been done once, more people will be interested in these opportunities in the future. Quoting from Iron Man 2: If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in him. There will be blood in the water, the sharks will come.
  - 6y ago
jldugger 6y ago
> The "real question," imo is not about how FB, discord or reddit handle WSB's culture. It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? Because when you're short a few billion on a position, and your counterparty is a toxic stream of garbage, its a profitable strategy to paying someone to report all the toxic b.s. and disrupt their organization. In 2021, we figured out how to get hedge funds to pay content moderator salaries!
- harry8 6y ago
  >pay content moderator salaries! No. They pay the trolls to make content moderation a misery They don't want the content moderated, that's the excuse to shut down the thing that outsmarted them.
  - kibwen 6y ago
    Of all the companies to level this accusation at... Facebook has more money than these funds. The biggest bank in the country, JPMorgan, is worth $400B (remember that total assets is not the same thing as net worth); Facebook is worth >$500B. Nobody outsmarted Facebook here. The scale that these funds are operating at is peanuts compared to Facebook's operations.
    - harry8 6y ago
      Outsmarted the group that happened to be hosted by Facebook. Facebook will always act in Facebook's interests, the hedge funds pointing at trolls and yelling (trolls they themselves seeded?). Makes Facebook's interests align with the hedge funds and run counter to this particular group. Group is shutdown. Hedge funds outsmarted the group who had outsmarted them. It's a blip on Facebook's horizon at best other than balancing PR concerns. Will people hold it against Facebook or can you spin it as justified by "hate"? The hedge funds, their investors and political connections will hold it against Facebook should Facebook take the other side. Facebook will currently be concerned about a new approach to regulation with the dems now in power. Facing down that monopoly regulation to make it toothless will be Facebook's number 1 concern right now unless they've already got it locked up, which is more than possible. Are we ok with this? We talk about endemic corruption like it's the most normal thing in the world. But it isn't. Reform or perish.
impalallama 6y ago
It’s not fishy at all. everything that’s happened has caused these communities to grow exponentially to unprecedented levels. tripling or quadrupling in size. It’s like asking why a house party of a dozen people doesn’t get raided by the cops and a party of hundreds does.
- jononor 6y ago
  Of all actors, platforms like Discord and Facebook should understand that such an influx makes it quite hard to moderate well. And that there is also a risk of adversarial actors infiltrating the groups. If they had any interest in the well-being of said communities, they would show some understanding of this challenge. At the very least wait a few days until things have shaken out. But no, straight to the ban hammer, with no dialogue.
starfallg 6y ago
>It's why have they all decided to act right now I suspect a large part of it would be to protect themselves in case the recent publicity brings forth some undesired attention from regulator with regards to market manipulation.
trhway 6y ago
>It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? the demonstrated power and financial success of WSB, even if fleeting and temporary, provides a lot of implicit credibility and validation to the "retard/YOLO" non-PC culture of WSB. The modern society worships success, and the people pay oversized attention to what successful people do - like what they eat, how exercise, how they stay motivated, etc. And now instead of respectable, successful, well dressed, educated, smart, cool, etc. Wall Street-ers a bunch of "retards" crawled from under the rock, teared a new one to those Wall Street-ers and got right on top of that podium of success veneration and idolation (like the "nerds" did 20 years ago with their tech startups). No surprise all the establishment (which these days naturally includes successful "nerds" of the previous generation) fights back. The established interests are always scared of changes, and especially when changes look like paradigm shift (while we wouldn't know for quite some time whether it is a true paradigm shift or just an aberration, the scare is real)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? Because they all have fairly loose monitoring and mostly complaint-based policy enforcement, and people being pissed off at you for any reason makes it more likely that complaints get reported.
- TheKarateKid 6y ago
  The fact that the group was previously suspended by Facebook for being a "dangerous organization" makes this removal even more suspect. It was suspended for two different reasons.
Thorrez 6y ago
>It's why have they all decided to act right now They might have decided in many cases to act now, but with this specific case it seems to have been 11 days ago: >Facebook suspended his group on Jan. 7
- ttt0 6y ago
  I think this is a mistake. They already issued one correction from "20-member" to "20,000-member". The author seems to have serious problems with numbers. Look at the first paragraph: > Facebook Inc took down a popular Wall Street discussion group, Robinhood Stock Traders, in a move that its founder on Thursday described as backlash for conversations buoying shares of GameStop Corp and other companies this week. First, a typo, "buoying". But it also says "this week". So what they meant is probably Jan. 27.
  - jmalicki 6y ago
    Not a typo, a totally appropriate word. The conversations buoyed the shares, they did not buy them. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/buoying https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/buoyi...
    - ttt0 6y ago
      Thanks, English is not my native language.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Hmm, good point, I didn't think of that possibility. It's a very confusing article, as I mentioned in a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954579
    - ttt0 6y ago
      That's what got me confused too, the entire article makes zero sense if it was on Jan 7. Good catch though, I would have never noticed that.
hotz 6y ago
It's not fishy. It's blatant as all hell.
pelliphant 6y ago
Why is it fishy? A week ago, nobody what so ever, cared about WSB. Today, I just had a conversation with my dad about WSB... Everyone is talking about it, I'm not surprised that someone even talked about it on some facebook board-meeting or whatever...
TheCondor 6y ago
They acted now because it drew attention to their platform. Not the kind of attention they wanted. They seem to basically not care until something big happens and they could appear to have helped/allowed it to be organized on their platform. This seems clear as day. There is still a ton of foul, lewd, right leaning, left leaning, offensive, racist, x-phobic, etc content on these platforms, it’s just not drawing attention to the platform. Ironically or maybe it’s more indicative of the intelligence limitations of those taking part, them shuttering these groups becomes more ammunition for the falsehoods and antiestablishment ideas the groups promote. It’s probably a lot less fishy than you might think. You can’t have fight club anymore when everyone knows about it...

wvenable 6y ago

It might be fishy but there is also a lot new interest in WSB and everything related. So much interest that /r/WSB voluntarily shut themselves down for a while because they couldn't handle the moderation situation. So why it's happening now can more multifaceted than the more conspiratorial reasons. Even increased media attention is enough for someone to act -- The Hackernews community uses that all the time to get apps unbanned from the app store, for example.

dalbasal 6y ago
Sure. I don't mean that it's unequivocally part of a conspiracy. But like I said, It can't go unaddressed. This isn't a Hacker news story about a banned app. It's international news, and the news isn't about WSB's (admittedly) bad language.
- wvenable 6y ago
  It's international news -- so the spotlight is on. Probably most of the Internet is unsavory and nobody cares because nobody knows.
- bravura 6y ago
  Social networks were forced to moderate with the capitol riots. Now they have to moderate left wing mob organization on their platforms to avoid the perception they will only censor the right wing.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    WSB is less left-wing, more Libertarian. I routinely see them shit on both the left and right.
  - tux1968 6y ago
    If that was the thinking, they would be shutting down the groups that are organized and protesting in the pacific northwest.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    This is clearly a slippery slope. Regulate once, regulate twice, and so on...
jb775 6y ago
Serious question: Since Facebook is a private company, does the "if you don't like it, you can build your own platform" argument apply here? Or does that only apply selectively when it benefits partisan politics? The RobinHood $GME situation is the natural next step in societal evolution once extreme censorship is given a pass. If you support the "go build it yourself" argument, you no longer have the right to complain about anything that's theoretically reproducible.
- wvenable 6y ago
  Absolutely! I'm not sure why you replied to my comment with this but I totally believe that Facebook doesn't have any legal or moral requirement to host anything they don't want to. They could literally just punt me tomorrow because they don't like my name and that's their right. Especially because there is no commercial or contractual relationship between us. I am not a customer of Facebook. If you pay for hosting then you have a contract and then you and the company you're buying from are beholden to those terms.
  - piokoch 6y ago
    I believe when you sign up to Facebook you need to accept some terms and condition clause - this is the contract which is signed between you and Facebook (Facebook is referring that document when users are banned, so apparently they consider this as contract). Facebook earns money thanks to its users, providing them some service so definitely there should be a contract here. Now, when you look on those T&C, they are very vague, especially possible reasons for account suspension are very, very vague. They refer user to some "community standards" and it is not clear, if those "standards" are part of the contract or not. In my opinion, the first thing that should be changed is to force Facebook and other services to provide a clear, formal contract that would state what are duties of both contract parts, what rights they have, etc. Stuff that each normal contract has. No mumbling about "community", etc. Contract should be something that is enforceable and has clear appeal path and so on. If I don't agree with Facebook I should be able to court and refer to something that is specific and well defined, not some Mark Zuckerberg views on what is good or bad.
eggy 6y ago
"/r/WSB voluntrily shut themselves down" is the point. It was self-managment. When a tech oligarchy - FB, Twitter, etc. acts together to censor that is my concern. Like there wasn't lot of silly banter or still is on many forums, except this one pissed off hedge fund managers and traditional investors. Mark must have lost money ;)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Scaevolus 6y ago

Historically, reddit is most likely to move against subreddits when they cause embarrassing news articles.

colinmhayes 6y ago
Make no mistake, Reddit is absolutely loving this. WSB has 3 million new subscribers in the past 2 weeks. The only thing the executives at reddit care about is revenue and hence impressions, which is exactly what they're getting.
- thisisnico 6y ago
  Also, do you see just HOW MANY awards are being applied to WSB posts? It's consistently off the charts lol. I'm willing to bet it's the most awarded subreddit by a wide margin.
- encom 6y ago
  >The only thing the executives at reddit care about is revenue and hence impressions Oh please. If that was true, they wouldn't have banned TheDonald, especially so close to the election. That sub drove a huge amount of traffic.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    They know they have more to lose by pissing off the community.
  - Darmody 6y ago
    Everything surrounding TD subreddit was getting out of hand so they had to act to look like the good guys who care about stuff.
  - belorn 6y ago
    If we are talking money incentives, a community that are discussing stock investments seems more interesting for advertisement than politics. If a person are investing in stock options, it almost guarantied that they have spare money.

newacct583 6y ago

Largely because the "gamestop maneuver" has inflammed an already excitable community and things are likely bubbling over right now in a way that they wouldn't be if people hadn't just bet thousands of dollars on a tulip scam. And let's not euphemize this, it's not a "maneuver", it's market manipulation. Coordinating a collective buy to effect a short squeeze is clear market manipulation. Enticing a horde of gullible forum users to buy the same ballooned stock based on ideas like "stick it to the man" and "turn their tricks back on them" is an even clearer pump and dump scheme. This doesn't end well for anyone (except Gamestop's pre-existing shareholders I guess). The hedge fund got fleeced, the gullible WSB users are going to lose a ton, Robinhood flushed their brand down the toilet trying to avoid being an accomplice to all of this, and the only folks who made money on the deal are more likely than not in the SEC crosshairs now.

fny 6y ago
No it's not market manipulation. Its counter party risk gone awry and the entirety of the internet finding out about it at the same time. In my view, hedge funds have implicitly colluded for years on short positions because it's in their best interests not to screw each other over the long haul. Imagine going against Citadel as a fund. Your career is over. The fact the short interest rose to 140% is proof of that. This trade should have been shaken out sooner, but no one would dare given the powers that be who were backing it. Also, consider the bond holders as true original victims here. Is it right that they had people artificially putting downward pressure on the security of a company that is indebted to them? If you believe in reflexivity, this is depriving lenders of a fair security valuation, which is an asset of sorts, and further driving them towards a delisting or bankruptcy.
- sampo 6y ago
  > no one would dare given the powers that be who were backing it But now that it has been done once, more people will be interested in these opportunities in the future. Quoting from Iron Man 2: If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in him. There will be blood in the water, the sharks will come.
- 6y ago

jldugger 6y ago

> The "real question," imo is not about how FB, discord or reddit handle WSB's culture. It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? Because when you're short a few billion on a position, and your counterparty is a toxic stream of garbage, its a profitable strategy to paying someone to report all the toxic b.s. and disrupt their organization. In 2021, we figured out how to get hedge funds to pay content moderator salaries!

harry8 6y ago
>pay content moderator salaries! No. They pay the trolls to make content moderation a misery They don't want the content moderated, that's the excuse to shut down the thing that outsmarted them.
- kibwen 6y ago
  Of all the companies to level this accusation at... Facebook has more money than these funds. The biggest bank in the country, JPMorgan, is worth $400B (remember that total assets is not the same thing as net worth); Facebook is worth >$500B. Nobody outsmarted Facebook here. The scale that these funds are operating at is peanuts compared to Facebook's operations.
  - harry8 6y ago
    Outsmarted the group that happened to be hosted by Facebook. Facebook will always act in Facebook's interests, the hedge funds pointing at trolls and yelling (trolls they themselves seeded?). Makes Facebook's interests align with the hedge funds and run counter to this particular group. Group is shutdown. Hedge funds outsmarted the group who had outsmarted them. It's a blip on Facebook's horizon at best other than balancing PR concerns. Will people hold it against Facebook or can you spin it as justified by "hate"? The hedge funds, their investors and political connections will hold it against Facebook should Facebook take the other side. Facebook will currently be concerned about a new approach to regulation with the dems now in power. Facing down that monopoly regulation to make it toothless will be Facebook's number 1 concern right now unless they've already got it locked up, which is more than possible. Are we ok with this? We talk about endemic corruption like it's the most normal thing in the world. But it isn't. Reform or perish.

impalallama 6y ago

It’s not fishy at all. everything that’s happened has caused these communities to grow exponentially to unprecedented levels. tripling or quadrupling in size. It’s like asking why a house party of a dozen people doesn’t get raided by the cops and a party of hundreds does.

jononor 6y ago
Of all actors, platforms like Discord and Facebook should understand that such an influx makes it quite hard to moderate well. And that there is also a risk of adversarial actors infiltrating the groups. If they had any interest in the well-being of said communities, they would show some understanding of this challenge. At the very least wait a few days until things have shaken out. But no, straight to the ban hammer, with no dialogue.

starfallg 6y ago

>It's why have they all decided to act right now I suspect a large part of it would be to protect themselves in case the recent publicity brings forth some undesired attention from regulator with regards to market manipulation.

trhway 6y ago

>It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? the demonstrated power and financial success of WSB, even if fleeting and temporary, provides a lot of implicit credibility and validation to the "retard/YOLO" non-PC culture of WSB. The modern society worships success, and the people pay oversized attention to what successful people do - like what they eat, how exercise, how they stay motivated, etc. And now instead of respectable, successful, well dressed, educated, smart, cool, etc. Wall Street-ers a bunch of "retards" crawled from under the rock, teared a new one to those Wall Street-ers and got right on top of that podium of success veneration and idolation (like the "nerds" did 20 years ago with their tech startups). No surprise all the establishment (which these days naturally includes successful "nerds" of the previous generation) fights back. The established interests are always scared of changes, and especially when changes look like paradigm shift (while we wouldn't know for quite some time whether it is a true paradigm shift or just an aberration, the scare is real)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 6y ago

> It's why have they all decided to act right now, just as this gamestop maneuver is happening? Because they all have fairly loose monitoring and mostly complaint-based policy enforcement, and people being pissed off at you for any reason makes it more likely that complaints get reported.

TheKarateKid 6y ago
The fact that the group was previously suspended by Facebook for being a "dangerous organization" makes this removal even more suspect. It was suspended for two different reasons.

Thorrez 6y ago

>It's why have they all decided to act right now They might have decided in many cases to act now, but with this specific case it seems to have been 11 days ago: >Facebook suspended his group on Jan. 7

ttt0 6y ago
I think this is a mistake. They already issued one correction from "20-member" to "20,000-member". The author seems to have serious problems with numbers. Look at the first paragraph: > Facebook Inc took down a popular Wall Street discussion group, Robinhood Stock Traders, in a move that its founder on Thursday described as backlash for conversations buoying shares of GameStop Corp and other companies this week. First, a typo, "buoying". But it also says "this week". So what they meant is probably Jan. 27.
- jmalicki 6y ago
  Not a typo, a totally appropriate word. The conversations buoyed the shares, they did not buy them. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/buoying https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/buoyi...
  - ttt0 6y ago
    Thanks, English is not my native language.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  Hmm, good point, I didn't think of that possibility. It's a very confusing article, as I mentioned in a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25954579
  - ttt0 6y ago
    That's what got me confused too, the entire article makes zero sense if it was on Jan 7. Good catch though, I would have never noticed that.

hotz 6y ago

It's not fishy. It's blatant as all hell.

pelliphant 6y ago

Why is it fishy? A week ago, nobody what so ever, cared about WSB. Today, I just had a conversation with my dad about WSB... Everyone is talking about it, I'm not surprised that someone even talked about it on some facebook board-meeting or whatever...

TheCondor 6y ago

They acted now because it drew attention to their platform. Not the kind of attention they wanted. They seem to basically not care until something big happens and they could appear to have helped/allowed it to be organized on their platform. This seems clear as day. There is still a ton of foul, lewd, right leaning, left leaning, offensive, racist, x-phobic, etc content on these platforms, it’s just not drawing attention to the platform. Ironically or maybe it’s more indicative of the intelligence limitations of those taking part, them shuttering these groups becomes more ammunition for the falsehoods and antiestablishment ideas the groups promote. It’s probably a lot less fishy than you might think. You can’t have fight club anymore when everyone knows about it...